


Fresh From the War (Don't Think About It No More)

by Hth



Series: Casanova [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Feels, I don't know how to tag this, M/M, Season/Series 11, They have sex and talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:07:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: Who has four thumbs and no relationship skills?  These guys!Or, two weeks after the grand romantic declaration, Castiel has existential questions and Dean has sexual frustration.  So not much has changed.





	Fresh From the War (Don't Think About It No More)

**Author's Note:**

> THE ROAD SO FAR: This is technically a sequel to Casanova (Fucked Me Over), but honestly, I think you could read it on its own if you want to read something shorter, or if you have a burning passion for established relationship stories. I think all you'd really need to know about this universe is that Castiel and Dean have been dancing around having this It's Complicated not-quite-relationship since season 5, including an even more It's Complicated fling in Purgatory.
> 
> They finally did the thing right after episode 11X04, because that's my favorite episode. This story begins where episode 11X06 leaves off.
> 
> THE FUTURE: I actually have notes for several more chapters of this through seasons of 11 and 12, but my gut feeling right now is that it'll be a while before I get to that. So I could post this as chapter 1 of whatever, but that seems misleading? Eventually this may become chapter 1 of whatever, but today it's its own thing.
> 
> Title comes from Heart's "How Deep It Goes," which is Dean and Castiel's song, they just don't know it yet.

 

“I'll look into the lore,” Sam says, a fairly transparent excuse to flee the room. They all know there is no lore on this – entity, whatever it is. Whatever she is.

Castiel can't hold it against him. Sam has been extraordinarily gracious, over the years, about being made an unwilling party to arguments much like this one – arguments that have little if anything to do with him. It was probably awkward enough before the arguments became...

Lovers' quarrels. Cass supposes one might call them.

So now it's just the two of them, alone in the war room. Castiel frowns down at Dean's hand where it rests on the back of a chair, and he wants....

Nothing. He doesn't want anything. He's just tired.

Dean straightens his back with a little huff and says briskly, “Come on. I don't want to do this here.”

Castiel isn't sure what _this_ is, but for his own part he'd be surprised if he wanted to do it at all, anywhere. Dean, however, appears to want just that, and so Castiel follows him.

He's so tired, and there is, quite distressingly literally, still blood on his hands.

Dean holds the door of his room open for Castiel, and closes it behind both of them once they're inside. The room has a sink, and all Castiel can think about is the blood--

_is all the blood_ –

\--and so he's grateful for the opportunity to clean himself up. He turns the hot water on and then the cold water, both with his less-sore left hand, and runs his thumb over his knuckles under the stream. The blood is mainly Metatron's, but when he nudges, he discovers there are small folds of disconnected skin lying loosely over exposed red meat in his right hand.

He's surprised he had the strength to injure himself.

He isn't surprised he had the strength to injure Metatron. Castiel seems to have a special genius for assaulting angels.

Former angels. There's a fine but critical distinction... isn't there?

How, he wonders, do you know which one you are? How do you know it _with certainty_?

“Are you okay?” Dean says. Castiel looks over at him and blinks; Dean is hovering closer to Cass' side than he realized, one hesitant hand raised as if he's considering touching Cass' arm. “You hurt your hand,” Dean says, in a soft, gruff voice that Cass is beginning to recognize as...personal. A voice he reserves for Castiel, or at least for...people he cares for the way he cares for Castiel.

“It doesn't really hurt,” Castiel says. “It's just annoying. I should be able to heal it.”

“You will,” Dean says. “You're getting there.” Castiel nods, gazing into his own eyes in the mirror. “Hey,” Dean says, softer still. He makes his decision at last, pressing his palm to Castiel's arm, curling his fingers loosely. He leans in a little, and Castiel ducks his head and turns a little, and he thinks maybe – this time, maybe it'll be – easy.

It's not. The delicate sound of the water he left running distracts him, and he seizes the excuse to pull away, to turn back to the sink and turn it off. “Christ,” Dean mutters under his breath, and Castiel doesn't blame Dean for being frustrated, he really doesn't at all, but he also very much does not need the reminder of who is causing the problems in this relationship.

_You are broken – scarred deep--_

“Let me try to understand,” Castiel hears himself snap. “I should  _not_ interpret you yelling at me in front of Sam to mean that you don't expect to have sex with me afterwards.”

It's a terrible thing to say, both unkind and untrue. He knows that. He knows.

_You thought if you could get your grace back it would help fix you...._

“Yeah,” Dean says with a sharp laugh caught between his teeth. “Because you haven't wanted me to touch you for two weeks, but I was pretty sure  _this_ was the night we were gonna tear each other's clothes off and bone down. Can't you feel the romance in the air?”

“Do you have to make a joke out of everything?” Cass grumbles. He doesn't know why he can't stop scratching at Dean, why he... why things are... why he's been so....

_...help fix you, but it hasn't._

“Look, nobody's forcing you--” Dean begins, but whatever he hears himself about to say seems to trouble him, and he lapses into a moment of silence. Castiel waits until Dean clears his throat and says in an uncertain voice Castiel scarcely recognizes at all, “If you've changed your mind about all this, you can just say that. It's okay, we're-- We'd still be-- You know. Friends.”

He's trying to be kind. Castiel knows what kindness looks like on Dean. He knows.

He knows he doesn't deserve Dean's kindness, and for some complicated, far-too-human reason, it seems that he wants very much for Dean to know that, too. “I'm sorry I haven't been as accessible to you as you imagined I'd be, but I've been  _ill_ .”

“Yeah, I fucking know that,” Dean says. He's raising his voice now, and it comes as a relief to Castiel; he couldn't explain why. “Who do you think's been protecting you this whole time? Sam wanted you back in the field as soon as you could stagger from your room to the kitchen and back,  _I'm_ the one who said you should get all the time you needed, so don't act like I-- Fuck, Cass, this isn't even – you  _know_ this. You know me better than this.”

True. “This isn't – an ideal situation for me, either,” Castiel says. Even he isn't sure if it's an apology.

What are Castiel's apologies worth? He owes so infinitely many. They do so infinitessimally little.

“I'm not concerned about the sex,” Dean says bluntly. “You think I can't handle a couple weeks' dry spell? Trust me, pal, my life is a dry spell. It's nothing. I just don't understand.... I mean, the way you just pulled away from me, what is that? What am I-- “ There's another brief silence. Castiel can't turn away from his own gaze, he and his reflection both casting thousand-yard stares at each other across the space of a porcelain sink that was doubtless quite modern in 1935. “Did I do something?” Dean finally says. “I mean...are you mad at me or something?”

“No,” Castiel whispers. “No, I....” What else would Dean think, though? It's the most logical explanation for Castiel's behavior.

Two weeks have gone by since, utterly without foreshadowing or preamble, Dean came to him and put his arms around him and said  _I missed you_ and  _I want you in my life_ and  _all yours, babe_ – since Dean kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, like two thousand individual apologies, like he was measuring out the six years of time they'd let slip away, day by day and kiss by kiss, and everything was so easy. With Dean wrapped around him, Castiel was so sure that he understood – what to do. How to do it. That for once Cass understood who he was meant to be, now that he is what he is.

There aren't words for what it was like to make love with Dean, let alone to hold him while he slept afterwards. Castiel is sure it requires – melody, at the very least. He wanted to write songs for Dean. He wanted to cover Dean's strong, faintly scarred body with flowers and insects and all the other things that are as perfectly themselves as Dean Winchester. And when Dean woke in the morning and smiled sleepily at Castiel and kissed his fingertips and said  _Morning, angel. Pancakes?_ – he felt as if Dean had covered Castiel's entire body with fiery poetry poured from the tip of a quill plucked from an archangel's pinion.

Questions hadn't entered into any of it. Not for a moment.

How long did Castiel think it could go on like that?

He's still staring at himself in the mirror, so he knows there's no blood on his face, but he can still feel it – forced from his eyes, dripping down the skin of his face, warm and slippery and so entirely out of his control.

He could have killed Dean, and still Dean kissed him, and it felt....

Everything was warm and slippery and so entirely....

Castiel braces his hands on the sink and disengages from his own haunted gaze, staring down the drain instead. “The – the human body --” he says, and he can't make his mouth and his vocal cords work either, he can't do _anything_ right. “It hurts – and when it feels good, it's still-- The things you do to me....”

The things Dean does to him. To this body that was never meant to be Castiel's – that can be made into a thing that destroys, or else a thing that pleases – and is that all a body is, is it a _thing?_ A thing that humans have and angels want, or despise, or want and despise?

Would he be so broken if he weren't locked inside this terrifying, vulnerable _thing?_

“Cass,” Dean says, sounding helpless. “Cass, please just – would you just look at me?” Cass obeys his command, feeling vertebrae twist and eyes refocus and his heart pump faster at the sight of Dean. “Just tell me the truth, okay?” Dean says. “Did I – did I hurt you? Was it – too much? I knew you still weren't at a hundred percent, I just thought.... If I hurt you, I'm so sorry, I just-- I didn't think it through, it's my fault.”

There were bruises, it's true – faint print of a thumb on his hipbone, fainter on his chin. Castiel lay in bed all night, feeling them well up and then fade away under his skin, healing faster than if he'd been human, slower than if he'd been an angel. “You didn't hurt me,” Castiel says truthfully. “It's not-- None of this is your fault. I love you, but I.... I've never felt any of this before, and it's...overwhelming.”

He's so broken. He's so _breakable_. In his true form, Castiel is sure he would have been able to resist all these alien forms of control and possession: the witchcraft that sickened him, the lust that shattered him – all these powers that can set a human vessel aflame and boil its blood.

Rest, his friends keep telling him. Rest up, get strong again, take care.

His scars run straight down the middle of him, soaked in the boiling of his blood, and this world that Castiel has tried so hard to love and defend has wrapped its hands around his throat, forcing blood and semen out of him, and he wants the pleasure without the pain, but that's an impossibility, isn't it? That's always been an impossible wish, as impossible as _rest_ and _strong_ and _care._

“Huh,” Dean says, the ghost of a laugh. “Yeah, I guess you – didn't exactly get to figure your body out the way the rest of us did.”

“How did you?” Castiel asks. How do humans...figure it out? Make peace with it? Survive it?

“Long showers,” Dean says, his voice wry, as if he's making some impenetrable joke, which knowing Dean he almost certainly is. “Shoplifted porn. So many violated hand towels and pillowcases. Oh, god, all the wrong things me and Sam did to innocent hotel housekeepers, there oughta be a class-action lawsuit.”

“I don't know what you're saying right now,” Castiel admits.

“I know,” Dean says. “Look, hey – come here, okay? You don't have to do anything you don't want to, I just – I just want you to come sit down and talk to me. Please.”

He knows he'll agree, but he doesn't respond right away. He watches Dean pull a chair to the foot of his bed, watches Dean sit down facing the empty chair, watches Dean watch Cass with guarded, cautious eyes that nevertheless betray hope.

Dean is human. He lives every day with a body that is constantly poised to betray him. He never even seems to notice. _Walk it off_ , he says when someone is hurt. _Rest up. You'll be okay. Good as new._

Castiel sits in the chair, his knees inches from Dean's knees. He looks down at them, and none of the four knees seem to belong to him.

Even Castiel's grace doesn't belong to him, let alone this vessel. But without his grace... he survived, didn't he? He was...fine. He walked it off.

If he abandons this vessel, he's fairly sure it will fail and die. It needs him.

He needs it.

He needs Dean so badly. His fingers curl in loose fists, resting on top of his knees, and they ache from the strain of not reaching out to touch Dean.

“You can't do this anymore,” Dean says gently. Castiel's head jerks up to look at him uncertainly. “You can't just let me flop around trying to guess what you're thinking. I don't read minds, okay? I don't even do relationships. I'm not gonna get it right unless you help me out.”

“I'm sorry,” Castiel says.

Dean shakes his head once, dismissing that. “Don't be sorry. Just quit doing it. Tell me why – why you seemed so happy two weeks ago, and now you're so freaked out. What happened, Cass?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing happened. I just...had time to think, I guess.”

Half of Dean's beautiful mouth lifts in a smile. “Yeah, how's that working out for you?”

Castiel can't help but smile back, at least with his eyes. “It's been a frustrating time. I beat a servant of the Lord half to death; that helped.”

“There's my angel,” Dean says.

Castiel looks down at his hands, then leaves his head ducked as his eyes lift up to find Dean. “That helps, too,” he admits on a soft breath.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is not to kiss you when you do that?” Dean asks, and Castiel looks guiltily down at the floor again. Dean sighs. “Okay, one thing at a time. First, are we still doing this? Do you – want to date me at all? We can slow down or whatever, we don't have to-- It can look like whatever we want it to, I just – I just need to hear you say that you want it.”

“I want it,” Cass says. “I want to...date you.”

He's not entirely sure what that means, in the context of – them. Dean already owns him, entirely, utterly, and has for years. Do they...go on dates now, in addition to that?

“Okay,” Dean says, and he sounds pleased, at least. “Okay, that's thing one. Great, cool. Now, the second thing.”

Castiel waits to hear what the second thing is, but there's only silence. Curiosity compels him to lift his head, and he sees that Dean has put his hand into the empty space between them, palm up, motionless. Castiel looks at it, then at Dean's face, sure that his confusion is plain on his face, even if he can't speak it. Dean gives him a soft nod of encouragement, and Castiel picks his own hand up off his knee, but then hesitates before reaching out. “Do you want me to...?”

“You can,” Dean says. “If you want to.”

So much freedom. Dean has always been a missionary on behalf of free will. At times, Castiel has found it deeply frustrating.

Tonight he doesn't. He isn't sure how to name this emotion, but it's – warm, and it's grateful. Pleasant. “If I don't,” he asks, even though he wants to, and he will, “am I...still yours?”

Something flickers over Dean's expression, some fragile, sweet regret. “Aw, Cass,” he says, almost a whisper. “Yeah. Yeah, of course you are, angel.”

Castiel lays his hand across Dean's and waits until Dean's hand closes loosely around it before pulling the nested pair of them closer. Dean gives him control easily, letting Cass rotate their wrists, letting him lift both hands and place a kiss on the back of Dean's. “What I feel for you is a sin,” Castiel murmurs against his skin, aware at the edge of his vision of the way Dean's eyebrows shoot higher even as he maintains his patient silence. “It's not just lust. It's gluttony. It's idolatry. And I can't stop.”

“So don't stop,” Dean says, as if it's that simple. “Cass, how high do you think this really rates on the scale of our sins?”

“I know,” Castiel says. “But _I can't stop_. And it has not, historically, been a good thing when I am not in control of my actions.”

“So you cut me off to prove that you can?” It sounds manipulative, even cruel, when Dean says it like that, but he says it so lightly, as if it's no more than one of Cass' amusing quirks. “Babe, I hate to break this to you, but I've been the thing you can't walk away from since roughly the Apocalypse. This is like building a whole new barn after the horses have all run off.”

He is not, factually speaking, wrong.

“Why does it feel so much like a curse?” Castiel hears himself ask, and immediately he's furious at himself for it. It's hurtful. It's untrue. He knows.

Why is he trying so hard to hurt Dean, when all he wants is to be back in Dean's arms the way he was when Dean fell asleep smiling?

Dean just shrugs it off, though. “Chemistry, I guess?” he says. “Hormones? Neuroses? I dunno, but I think it's – you know, pretty normal. To feel a little crazy when you're falling for someone. And let's be honest, neither of us were all that stable from the jump.”

From the jump. Castiel likes that phrase. It feels extremely descriptive. He kisses Dean's hand again, brushing his lips across each of Dean's knuckles, and says, “Are you saying you feel the same way?”

Dean shifts his thumb, stroking over the side of Castiel's hand. “What, crazy?” he asks. “Yeah, but you've been making me crazy since roughly the Apocalypse. I'm used to it.”

“I want to spend the night in your bed again,” Castiel says. “I want to hold you like I did before.”

“Okay,” Dean says. “Yeah, that sounds.... I want that, too. See? You don't have to make everything so hard, you can just tell--”

Castiel has already accepted and internalized the lesson, so he doesn't bother to let Dean finish. He just drops Dean's hand and leans forward, lacing his fingers together behind Dean's head and kissing him deeply. Dean grabs his sleeve and keeps kissing even when Castiel makes it difficult; he shoves Dean onto his back and up the bed, and Dean makes soft, aching noises of frustration and lets the kisses get sloppier, but he locks his hand tightly in the collar of Castiel's coat and rolls them over, and he doesn't let the kissing stop. “I love you,” Cass whispers against the warm notch just below Dean's lower lip.

“Take this goddamn thing off,” Dean says. “Why are you always wearing your fucking coat? We get it, you own a trench coat.”

“You don't approve of my plumage?” Castiel teases as he lets Dean wrestle the coat from him.

“It's not my favorite layer of you, no,” Dean says, loosening Castiel's tie.

His fingers brush Cass' vulnerable throat, and the blood roars, and the sea rises up to fill his mouth, drowning him. He can feel Dean's heartbeat, only the soft black fabric of his t-shirt separating their skin. He can feel the drag of the small buttons on Dean's second shirt as they scrape against Castiel's ribs – the internal metal structure of the mattress under his back – the unevenness of Dean's one chipped tooth under the tip of Castiel's tongue. Castiel makes an animal noise in his throat, the low whine of an abandoned dog, just to force Dean to kiss him back harder, to silence him. He wishes Dean would put his hand back on Castiel's throat, before he hurts someone....

“Please,” he pants as Dean begins to kiss his chest. “Please – I'm sorry – I'm so tired of being broken, I just want – I just want to love you without all this blood. Please don't be angry.” His eyes are closed, and he's tentatively aware of the space between them now, aware that Dean is no longer pressed against him. “I don't want to hurt anyone anymore,” Castiel says, and then it's time, there's no use waiting any longer. He opens his eyes.

Dean holds himself over Castiel, arms flexed, a fierce frown on his handsome features. They stay like that for what feels like some signifiant span of time, gazing at each other, mystified and frustrated by these strangers that they can still, after all this time, be to one another. “You know you're not broken, right?” Dean finally says.

“You know I am,” Castiel says softly. “I shouldn't have let Metatron go. I know that. I just – I felt so – I've been where he is. I know what it feels like to have so much power, then feel it torn from you. And I – I made him bleed, and when I looked at him, all I could see was your face covered in blood. Because of me.”

Slowly, Dean rolls to his back. The two of them only barely fit side by side on Dean's bed; it's easier when Dean works an arm underneath Cass and urges him to turn over, his chest pressed against Dean's shoulder. “I think we went too fast,” Dean says. “You're still recovering, and I guess I – didn't think all this would fuck with your head so bad. I'm not mad at you about Metatron, okay? I mean – I guess I was a little, but that's just – me being me. I don't like random pieces moving around the board where I can't see them. But you're not my hit man, okay, Cass? You made the call, you did what felt right to you, and that's all you can do. This job... there's a million judgment calls, and all you can ever do is make them. We make our calls, we hope for the best, and when the best doesn't happen, we deal with it. There's no other option. We all....” Dean rubs his thumb into his eye socket and repeats with unexpected timidity, “We all make our calls, right?”

Dean is lying very still, but something in his gaze, directed at a random point on the wall, feels restless to Castiel, so Castiel gentles him by smoothing his hand down Dean's chest. “I want to be worthy of your trust.”

“You are,” Dean says without hesitation. “And I need you to be able to trust me, too.”

“Of course I trust you.” Castiel kisses the small lines at the corner of Dean's eye and says, “You'll always be my righteous man, Dean Winchester, just as you always were.”

Dean exhales deeply and moves his eyes from the wall to Castiel's face. “Yeah,” he says, wry and fond at once. “I lose my damn mind when it comes to you, too.” Castiel kisses him again, at the corner of his lips this time, and Dean turns his neck at an ungainly angle to make his mouth more available, so Castiel obliges him, pushing up on an elbow to lean forward and catch Dean in an awkward, earnest kiss. Dean puts one hand in his hair and uses his other hand, thumb hooked through the belt loop on Castiel's trousers, to urge Castiel's hips into place, and Cass finds himself now on top of Dean as they continue to kiss.

He thinks he likes it. Dean's mouth feels softer this way, more yielding, though his hand is far from passive where it kneads Castiel's buttock. Cass uses the tips of his fingers to push Dean's shirt up, then to trace the line of his waistband toward the button of his jeans, savoring the way Dean's abdominal muscles tense, then the way the vault of his torso expands as he breathes in raggedly. “We didn't go too fast,” Castiel murmurs against his lips. “I waited a whole age of the world to be with you like this.”

Dean makes a deep, creaky sound of what Castiel thinks is agreement, raking his fingers from the nape of Castiel's neck up into his hair. When he bends his knee, he pins Castiel's hips between his thigh and his opposing hand – nothing like a hold so strong Castiel couldn't break out of it, but he knows he's caught anyhow, that he was captured long ago by this captivating human. “Fuck,” Dean says, after one quick, sharp bite to Castiel's lower lip. “We've got so much lost time to make up for.”

The sound of sex, the texture of it, rolls off of Dean's tongue and flickers along Castiel's skin like silk, like snakes, like temptation and witchcraft and a Fall that felt like it would never end. But it did end, and it ends here in this bed, in this man – Castiel's man. The heat of blood sings under Castiel's hands as he peels both shirts off of Dean, blood exposed in the lacerations across Castiel's knuckles, blood flushing Dean's chest darker and filling out his cock where it presses alongside Castiel's.

There is no pleasure without pain, not in this vessel – not in this body, this body that can wrack Castiel with sensation, that can break him and use him and control him, this body that can kill and come and call forth those rough, blissful cries from Dean.

There is no loving Dean without the boiling of this blood. Castiel understands now why it's forbidden. A love like this – a lust this profound is inescapably mortal, and to become enmeshed in it is to experience, however temporarily, mortality. Angels do not look kindly on that sort of thing.

On the scale of Cass' sins, however....

“Hey, angel,” Dean says, curling his hand against Castiel's cheek. “Where'd you disappear to?”

“Nowhere,” Castiel promises. “I'm with you.”

Dean puts his arms around Castiel, his hands on Cass' back, and drags them down his skin, tracing with his palms and his splayed fingers the terrain of Cass' torso. “We can do as much or as little as you want,” Dean says. “There's no hurry, Cass, okay? I know it feels good, but it'll still feel good down the road, I promise. And I'm gonna take a pass on another two weeks like the last two, if it's up to me.”

“I like the way you entertained the notion that not everything is up to you,” Castiel says indulgently. “I'm not sure you mean it, but it was touching anyhow.”

“Fuck you,” Dean says with a smile, “I make great decisions. If people would ever listen to me around here, we could all save ourselves a lot of heartache.”

“If you listened to _me_ , we could have been doing this six years ago,” Castiel points out.

Dean laughs shortly as he wedges his fingers under the flat waistband of Cass' trousers and the ruched elastic of his boxers. “Oh, man,” he says. “On that disgusting sofa in Maine with all the weird stains. Put a black light on that thing, and the bulb woulda committed suicide.”

Castiel hums lightly, trying to communicate both agreement and indifference, and brushes his lips from the apple of Dean's cheek down to the hollow below the cheekbone. “I wasn't thinking of the state of the upholstery. Only of how beautiful you were.”

“Young and skinny,” Dean says wryly. “Nothing but a metabolism wrapped around a bottle of tequila. You don't know what you got til it's gone.”

“You're as beautiful to me now,” Cass says simply.

“Yeah,” Dean says, fingers brushing behind Cass' ear. “I know.” He drums a fingertip playfully against Castiel's cheekbone and says, “You're on top, does that mean I get to watch you get naked this time?”

He glances at himself, already naked to the waist, and he feels a strange stutter in his own heartbeat, eagerness and fear and want and exposure, emotions that should be distinct, that shouldn't blur together so easily, or at all. “I don't know,” he says, because it's the truth.

The laughter blows out of Dean's eyes like fog dissipating. He cups his hand around the edge of Castiel's jaw and says, “Tell you what. Tonight, let's not push anything. Let's just stick to – you know, the stuff we know works, stuff we both like.” Castiel opens his mouth with some half-formed intent to argue, but Dean taps his thumb against Castiel's lower lip and says in his gruff, tender way, “I remember what it's like, okay? I really do. When everything's new and intense and you don't want to screw anything up or – let anyone down, and it's – it's hard to relax and have fun with that kind of pressure, I get it.”

“So this is a phase that passes?” Castiel asks.

Dean smiles softly at him. “Well, some of us stay more uptight than others, but yeah, I think it usually passes when you get a little experience under your belt. And – you know it's not just you, right, Cass? Some of this is new to me, too. And I want to try new things with you, I do. But there's nothing wrong with a little comfort food, either.”

“I like that,” Castiel says. “Comfort food. That makes it sound...cozy.” Safe.

“And you know I like to eat in bed,” Dean says, with the dip in his voice that conveys _pretending to be very serious_ and the twitch of his eyebrows that conveys _laugh at my joke_.

Castiel, who knows he excels at pretending to be very serious, so much so that Dean can't always suss him out, says, “We could have pizza delivered.”

“That better be a porn joke,” Dean says. He pushes against Castiel firmly enough to dislodge him, but keeps a hand on the back of Castiel's neck, guiding him down to his back.

Castiel has very little control over any of this – his vessel, his life, his heart, his fate. Dean, he thinks, has less control than he likes to pretend he does, but...he pretends so well. He makes Castiel feel...

Safe.

It's a lie, but Cass believes it. He believes it when he wants to believe it, when he gives in and lets Dean make him believe it.

“I like it when you kiss me,” Castiel says, sliding the fingers of both hands through Dean's hair, cupping the back of his head, and he'll always want this, sin or not, he always has and he'll never stop. Dean kisses him, and Castiel wants to protest when Dean moves his lips away, but what comes out of his mouth instead is, “Oh. Yes.”

Dean hums in satisfaction and shifts his weight onto one arm, stroking his other hand down Castiel's chest. “You make the sexiest noises,” he says. “Feel free to keep on doing that.”

“I feel free,” Castiel assures him, but his mind is already barely on his words, tangled instead around Dean's fingers as he unfastens Castiel's pants and pushes them down his hips along with his underwear.

He understands, he thinks, what Dean means by _comfort food_. There's history behind Dean's fingers pushing his thigh aside, behind the brief, perfunctory kiss Dean leaves against his groin. Dean touched him exactly like this, dozens of times, during the year they were something just shy of lovers. Sense-memory simmers low in Castiel's stomach, carrying the complex flavors of gratitude and regret and mourning and love, but all the worst parts of that year are a distant memory, and all the best parts are here in the warmth of Dean's exploring mouth, Dean's steadying hand resting on his thigh. All the best parts are Castiel's now to keep.

All the best parts are Dean, and Castiel tries to tell him so, tries to press the whole scope of his feelings into Dean's name as he speaks it aloud, again and again. When that fails, he curls his fist as much as he can into Dean's short hair, and Dean growls, shoving forward to drag his cheek against the side of Castiel's cock. “Fucking stop,” Dean says.

“I'm sorry,” Castiel says, releasing him immediately. “I thought you liked--”

“I do,” Dean says gruffly. “And I like not biting your dick, which I bet you like too, so stop doing that.”

That seems reasonable.

Dean's mouth is warm, so warm and mobile as it traces over Castiel's skin, raising more hot blood to the surface, answering heat for hunger and hunger for heat. Cass flings his forearm across his eyes, his pupils blown so wide that the light hurts – eyes and skin and heart all so open and permeable now, so vulnerable. Castiel would be afraid if he didn't have the weight of Dean's hand still on his thigh, grounding and claiming him.

He never knew what fear was before he met Dean, never thought about himself enough to fear his own death, never experienced a moment's failure of faith in God's great design. Since Dean, he's hardly known a day without fear, but it's worth it, it's worth everything; Castiel has bled and burned and suffered in every conceivable way for choosing Dean Winchester and everything that comes with him, but choosing otherwise is unthinkable and always has been.

He'll suffer and he'll sacrifice for love, and that he still believes is righteous.

He'll suffer and he'll sacrifice for the brutal ecstasy of spilling himself over Dean's tongue, lost in the limitless landscape of sensation that exists inside this vessel. He doesn't know, he doesn't know what that is, why that is, how it relates to love, where it fits into the great design – he doesn't know anything, except that he can't and won't choose otherwise.

Castiel listens to his own heightened breathing, aware of a slight soreness of the diaphraghm, a slight cramp in his right groin. He shifts his arm and fills his vision with Dean, who hovers over him, face flushed and lips damp and eyes dilated, smiling a little but also anxious as he pats the backs of his fingers against Castiel's cheek and gives him a questioning look. Castiel nods his response.

Dean settles more comfortably against him as they kiss lazily; Dean's mouth is pleasantly sour with the taste of Castiel's ejaculate and his cock is thick and warm against the outside of Castiel's thigh. “Why do you enjoy that?” Castiel asks, stroking his thumb over Dean's jaw and his neck.

“Mm?” Dean says. “You mean giving head?” Castiel nods. Dean doesn't answer immediately, just searching Castiel's face thoughtfully while the heel of his hand strokes over Castiel's pectoral muscles. “You want to know why I used to like it, or why I like it with you?”

He wants to know everything about Dean, obviously. “You should start with relevant historical background,” Castiel tells him, too drained to hide the tease in his voice and smile.

Dean gives him another kiss, brief and oddly businesslike, and rolls back to balance himself on his arm and elbow, his hand propping up his head. “I guess I learned pretty fast, back when I was young and horny all the time, that if all you've got to offer is _hey, wanna touch my dick_ , then you got a whole lot of nothing. Dick is pretty much free, you know? If you want it, you can get it, especially if you're hot. And I didn't have a lot else up my sleeve. I mean, I got personality and all that, but I wasn't in a position to take the time, you know? Chat girls up, ask them out, dates and all. I was on the move, and I was mostly going to be lying to them no matter what, so it's not like.... I don't know, what was I gonna do, ask them about their jobs? I didn't even have a decent suit back in the day, so no nice restaurants for me. I didn't have a lot going for me in the dating market, but I was – hey, I'm easy on the eyes, and I figured out early on that what keeps a lot of girls from being into hookups is that most guys suck in bed. So I figured that could – that'd be like my thing: I'm not going to date you, but you're definitely going to come. And lucky for me, girls have good instincts for that kind of thing, they know when you can back it up. So it worked – I mean, not like it worked on every single girl, but I pretty much got as much action as I wanted.”

“But that's – that wouldn't mean you had to enjoy it,” Castiel says. “That's strategic logic, it's not.... You do like it, apart from what it induces other people to do for you in return.” Castiel can't be wrong about that. It's in every touch and in the music of Dean's thoughts, things Dean can't possibly counterfeit.

Dean smiles at him and scrapes blunt fingertips along the edge of Castiel's fresh stubble. “Feels good to be good at something. Feels good to hear someone say you are. Eventually it's like a Pavlov thing – I start doing it, and I think – I don't know, I just know I got this, I know it's gonna work.” His smile deepens and he clarifies, “I'm gonna get those starry eyes like you're giving me right now. Sue me, it's a turn-on.”

“Vanity,” Cass sums up, smiling indulgently.

“Yeah, well,” Dean says. “Don't knock my vanity; if I didn't get all cranked up over a guy who's gonna Molotov cocktail an archangel just to impress me, you might not be here right now, looking like a cat in cream.”

“It wasn't just to impress you.”

“Don't ruin the fantasy.”

In case there's any kernel of truth to the accusation, Castiel pulls him in for a string of apologetic kisses, but in spite of the way that Dean warms to the touches, Castiel can't fully put his curiosity aside. “You said it's...different with me?”

Dean hums a little and repositions himself, pressing affectionate kisses against Castiel's shoulder while settling with one hand under the blankets, fondling himself unhurriedly. “Course it is,” he says, his voice low and pleasure-rough. “Well, not different – I still like the starry eyes, like you thinking I'm a tiger in the sack. But in – in relationships, it's less about wanting to hear how great I am, and more, just – I'm happy that you're happy. And when we're not both trying to get off at the same time, I can concentrate a little more.”

“On my happiness,” Castiel muses, turning it over and over in his mind.

Dean's hand has come to a still. “Yeah,” he says with a little more intensity than he has to. He speaks it like an order. “Because you're not happy enough of the time, and it's bullshit, and I hate it.”

“I know,” Castiel murmurs, stroking his palm over his lover's hair. “But I'm happier because of you.”

“Couldn't really tell by looking, lately,” Dean grumbles.

“I have the body of an animal and the consciousness of an angel,” Castiel says. “It's – disorienting. I don't know who I am.”

“Sounds like being human,” Dean says.

It does sound similar, Castiel realizes. But he's not human, either, in ways that he thinks will always be more obvious to him than they are to Dean. Dean does seem to forget sometimes, or nearly forget. Or choose to forget. “I withdrew from you,” Castiel says. “You were concerned for me, and you deserved more consideration.” Dean interrupts him with a kiss, but when it's over Castiel finishes his thought. “You're a good dating partner. I'm sure you're right, in your youth you were in no position to be, but you are now. For me.”

Dean stares at him for a moment, half perplexed and half tempted to tease. Castiel can read him so easily; it's so strange to think that not long ago, he felt Dean to be an impenetrable mystery. Finally he settles on a tease, but not a combative one: “I got suits now and everything. Take you out sometime, nice restaurant, really do it up right.”

“That sounds nice,” Castiel says. “Although I don't eat.”

“Wine bar,” Dean amends firmly.

“You don't like wine,” Castiel reminds him.

“I'll sneak in a flask. I just – I like you just stupid amounts, and I – I wanna....”

Castiel hushes him with a quick kiss to his lips and then to his forehead. “I know,” he says. “You want me to be happy. I know, and I'll try.” His hand finds Dean's hip under the covers, and he leans close to Dean's ear, flicking the tip of his tongue against the lobe. “Would you like me to...?”

Dean lets his breath sigh out slowly. “Kinda...tired now, actually? This was a shit day – not you, but the rest of it, and – God, getting old sucks. Listen, are you okay to – you wanna stay here again? It's probably boring for you, but--”

“It's not boring for me,” Castiel says. “I'll always hold you while you sleep, if you're willing.”

“Dork,” Dean murmurs, rubbing his lips lightly against the corner of Castiel's eye, then interrupting himself with a yawn. “Yeah, hang out here a few hours, if that's cool, and in the morning-- I usually jerk off in the shower in the morning, so I'm thinking if you want in on that....”

“I do want that,” Castiel says. “It's a date.”

He's surprised when Dean doesn't settle alongside him, but flips the covers aside and sits on the edge of the bed, using his toe to sort through the pile of discarded clothing. Castiel reaches out with no specific aim and settles for tracing his fingers down Dean's spine. Dean tosses a quick smile over his shoulder and says, “Settle down, Romeo, I just need to clean up a little, or I'm gonna smell like gym socks and stale dick when you kiss me in the morning.”

 _When you kiss me._ Castiel closes his eyes, letting the sound of it curl up and purr inside his ribcage. In the morning, he will kiss Dean. Dean will fall asleep tonight anticipating their morning kiss.

What they are choosing to do together, of their own free will, is real.

What they are choosing to do together, of their own free will, is sacrilege.

He hears it again and again – _when you kiss me in the morning...._ – while he watches with soft-eyed languor as Dean pulls on boxer-briefs and pads across the room to brush his teeth and rinse sweat from his armpits and the back of his neck. It's so thoughtless when Dean performs these actions, the routine maintenance speaking to how thoroughly Dean takes his body's familiarity for granted. And of course he does – he's had this body all his life, grown up with it, grown into it, experienced how it responds to almost every humanly possible dimension of pain and pleasure.

When Dean turns away from the mirror and faces the bed again, he breaks out in a broad smile that elevates Castiel's heartbeat. “You are such a creeper,” he says affectionately.

“I have no idea what you mean,” Castiel says, half-truthfully.

“Call me vain, then stare at my ass while I brush my teeth,” Dean chides. He's still smiling as he says it, still smiling as he slips back under the covers and into Castiel's arms.

“I was staring at all of you,” Castiel says. Truthfully.

Dean rolls his eyes; Castiel catches sight of the movement only briefly before Dean brings his forehead closer to touch Castiel's. “Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you were just admiring my soul.”

“No, your body,” Castiel freely admits, the words blurring into nothing more than air breathed back and forth between them. Dean tastes like mint and chalk now, but tasting him feels no less sexual than it did when he tasted of semen. “You seem so comfortable in it,” Castiel murmurs. “I envy that.”

Dean shrugs with one shoulder and uses the motion to wriggle closer still to Castiel. “Got nothing to compare it to. I wasn't a wavelength of celestial intent for a gazillion years, so, you know. No bad habits to break.”

“I am not a gazillion years old,” Castiel says. “Gazillion isn't even a number.”

“Okay, but you get that I was making a point, right?” Dean frees one arm enough to stroke his thumb over the corner of Castiel's eye and says so quietly it's almost a whisper, “It's okay if you don't love your body – your vessel, whatever you want to call it. It's really okay if it seems – breakable or small or weird or even gross sometimes, compared to what you were before. It's okay to just...think things suck sometimes. It doesn't mean you can't be happy other times.”

Castiel closes his eyes. Without the use of them, he still has four human senses that are all full of Dean Winchester, as well as his angelic awareness of the pulse of Dean's consciousness. “I'm tired of the blood,” he admits. “Mine. Yours. Everyone's. Everything breaks, and then it bleeds, and I'm _tired_ of it.”

“Me too, but what's the alternative?” Dean points out. “Heaven? You can't stand Heaven.”

“Animals and angels,” Castiel muses. “What's the alternative....?”

“Well, you think it over while I get some sleep, how's that sound, Socrates?” With his eyes closed, Castiel imagines that he can hear more depth and nuance in Dean's voice, the warm overtones of his indulgence. “Just for Christ's sake, don't end up on bees, I'm done with the damn bees.”

“I really think you never understood the bee metaphor--”

“Shut up,” Dean says, and his voice is rich and savory and ripples like the grain of polished wood. “You get to explain bee metaphors or you get to snuggle. Choose wisely.”

Castiel chooses.

In spite of the cost, he could never have chosen otherwise.

 

 


End file.
